John Baldessari's $100,000 Bill... Board (PHOTOS)

It's no big shocker that we are not at our finest economic hour, but John Baldessari may have stumbled upon a solution to our money woes. All this time we have been trying to make more money, when maybe we should have focused on making bigger money.

Just look at Baldessari's new installation towering over 18th Street in New York, an $100,000 bill board entitled 'The First $100,000 I Ever Made.' At 25-by-75-feet, this grand-scale gravy is big enough for everyone to enjoy, in some capacity at least.

The $100,000 dollar bill was issued in a previous attempt to assuage financial hardships during the Great Depression when 42,000 were circulated. Today they are illegal, though some have been kept in the Smithsonian Museum and Federal Reserve. But big problems need big solutions! Bring back those bills and supersize them, please.

Baldessari is known for his conceptual work toying with the relationship between narrative, language and image in art. What is he saying here? Are we in a Greater Depression? Is this the final equation of art and capital? Or was the whole 'bill board' pun just too good to pass up? What do you think?

Comments

[Luckey Man]

12:33 AM on 05/19/2012

This image, along with other large scale images of money was created by Richard L. Perri in large scale in 2007 years before 2011 and were 1st exhibited in "Javaganza" a show at Adobe Systems in San Francisco on June 27, 2008 again in "Mint Condition" a show at the Old San Francisco Mint in November 6, 2011. See the link...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/05/MN0H1LPRJ8.DTL

[zenbarry]

06:38 PM on 12/12/2011

The title, being a double entendre, would seem to imply, the lie of success, that lurks behind all advertising, and the scale would suggest that, the bigger the lie, the more commercially successful it is. Just my humble opinion, TY.

[eric14]

08:28 PM on 12/09/2011

What is he saying?

Money is too big.
The sooner it is vandalized, the sooner the statement will be complete.
Money must be cut down to size.
I like it.
Destroy it.

[dianadunlop]

10:59 AM on 12/09/2011

Baldessari's $100,000.00 billboard is interesting because almost all billboards are trying to get us to spend money, and so Baldessari in a sense revealed the subtext beneath all of the "get money from the viewer" billboards. It is a message to think beyond our first reactions to advertisements and loan documents and any situation where we are going to spend money or go into debt. Maybe the 2008 crisis in bad mortgages would have been less disastrous if one of these $100,000.00 billboards had been in all major cities in 2006 and 2007. Diana Dunlop

[eric14]

08:29 PM on 12/09/2011

I like final point. A moral reminder! Plse see mine above.